Weeknight dinners

We've gotten pretty lazy in our dinner planning. For this week, we went to the DFM only planning just to get ribs for dinner. But then when we were there, I saw the branzino and we decided to have that instead so the ribs moved to Monday. And in thinking about what else to have, Josh asked for a tagine, so we picked up three lamb shoulder steaks and some fava beans.

So the ribs were on Monday. They really take longer than you would expect, especially considering that I do them in our toaster oven. Since the toaster is small, I have to do it in two batches and that takes even longer. I know, I need a new oven. We ended up eating all but four of the ribs. I actually planned to use some of the extra ribs to make fried rice to share with Eric and Katy, but I'm not sure if I'll end up doing it. We'll see how I feel tomorrow. Josh couldn't eat just ribs like I could. So I also sauteed some Shanghainese bok choy with garlic and ginger for him.

So Tuesday was the tagine. I actually didn't get home until 7, so I was worried about the timing, but since the original recipe called for the 3 lbs of meat to cook for 1 1/2 hrs and I had only 1 lb, I was hoping I could actually third the time. In preparation for it, I had deboned the lamb and peeled the favas the night before.

I had Josh take the lamb out of the fridge while I was driving so that it would start to come up to temperature. Then I cut up the meat first to get it into the tagine as soon as possible with its onions and spices.

Our standard tagine is Claudia Roden's lamb tagine with potatoes and peas with the fava bean alternative. I didn't realize it was our standard but that's the page that the book opens to naturally, so obviously, it has spent a lot of time open to that page. I don't think I've made the full recipe in a while, so I usually just do the meat we buy and then the sauce as called for because I like it saucy.

While that was cooking, I prepped everything else including blanching and peeling the fava skins and prepping the preserved lemon. I cut and parpoiled some of McMullen Farms rosegold potatoes, which we love. I have mentioned before that I bought jarred preserved lemons and I didn't like the slightly sour taste that it put into the tagine. But I decided to make my own preserved lemons several months ago and they turned out perfect. So good. But now what am I going to do with these unopened jars of preserved lemons? I wonder if they need them at the food bank...

So anyway, I finished up the tagine. The meat was pretty tender though not probably quite as tender as it could be. The green olives had pits and I didn't really think that they were that great and I had already halved the amount. So I think that next time, I will crack them, pit them, and then chop em up. Guess I should go note that in my recipe.

Okay, noted. Nothing worse than deciding you want to alter a recipe, not writing it down, forgetting when you make the recipe the next time and cursing yourself.

I also like to have an apricot topping for my lamb (which Josh doesn't really like probably because it's so sweet) so I set those to soak as soon I could locate them in the closet and then put them into a pot on low with some water and honey. It turned out pretty tasty. And easy!

You can't have a tagine without couscous. And I managed to mess up the couscous by putting all the stuff into the bowl with the dry couscous instead of mixing it with the boiling water! But the sauce from the tagine cooked it. It was delicious.

We barely had any leftovers. Next time, we need more meat. Well, actually we need more everything. We ran out of potatoes before anything else.